Speaker 1: And the success that I envisioned was me being comfortable.
Speaker 1: But the priority was that we were still a family,
Speaker 1: just a different kind of family. That was the success
Speaker 1: that I envisioned. That was my priority.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 2: think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
Speaker 2: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 2: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Laura
Speaker 2: Cathart Robbins, an author, freelance writer, speaker, and host of
Speaker 2: the popular podcast The Only One in the Room. She's
Speaker 2: been active for many years as a speaker and school trustee,
Speaker 2: and is credited for creating the Buckley School's nationally recognized
Speaker 2: Committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice. On this episode,
Speaker 2: Eric and Laura discuss many topics, including her new book,
Speaker 2: Stash My Life in Hiding.
Speaker 3: Hi, Laura, welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Hey Eric, thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I am really happy to have you on. We're going
Speaker 3: to be discussing your new book called Stash My Life
Speaker 3: in Hiding. But before we get to that, let's start
Speaker 3: like we always do, with the parable. There's a grandparent
Speaker 3: who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 3: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 3: And the grandchild stops think about it for a second.
Speaker 3: They look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 3: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work that you do.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Having been a fan of your show, I know that
Speaker 1: I'm not the first person to say it gives me
Speaker 1: chills every time I hear that, because it does, it's
Speaker 1: just something. From the first time I heard it, I
Speaker 1: knew that it was profound, not just in life, but
Speaker 1: for me particularly, And I think for me, there's an
Speaker 1: absolute black and white way that I look at that.
Speaker 1: When I was in my addiction, it was far more obvious.
Speaker 1: Anything that took me, you know, further into my addiction
Speaker 1: was feeding that bad wolf. Mainly I was fearful during
Speaker 1: that time. That fear was so great. It was heightened
Speaker 1: fear twenty four to seven. There were certainly levels of it,
Speaker 1: but it was mainly around eight nine or ten, and
Speaker 1: so anything I could do to ease that, regardless of
Speaker 1: the impact that it had on anyone, was what I
Speaker 1: did during that time, that survival time. But prior to
Speaker 1: living in an addiction and post living in an addiction,
Speaker 1: I've also had times where I've made the choice to
Speaker 1: feed that bad wolf because I have been rageful or fearful.
Speaker 1: Usually everything is fear with me. Everything, every other negative
Speaker 1: response is based on fear. Where I am now and
Speaker 1: you and I had another conversation on my show, and
Speaker 1: I know that we're around the same time in recovery,
Speaker 1: which you know is different for me than just sober time.
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of these almost fifteen years really
Speaker 1: working on evolution, my own evolution, right, and so that choice,
Speaker 1: I think the difference is I didn't know that I
Speaker 1: had a choice prior about which wolf to feed. It
Speaker 1: was just instinctual. And then uncovering what created the addiction
Speaker 1: in my life allowed me to see the difference between
Speaker 1: intuition and instinct, which gives me that choice of how
Speaker 1: to act intuitively or act in instinct out of fear,
Speaker 1: and instinct out of fear for survival is often feeding
Speaker 1: that bad wolf. Acting in my intuition, which is usually
Speaker 1: the right thing, the aligned thing with what's in front
Speaker 1: of me, feeds the good one.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of different places we could go from there.
Speaker 3: I guess I'll start by just wondering whether you first
Speaker 3: heard that parable like I did in a recovery meeting.
Speaker 4: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Oh, Okay, my parents were hippies and so I mean
Speaker 1: I was like in drum circles and stuff when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid. I think I heard it when
Speaker 1: I was younger, Okay, but definitely it hit me in
Speaker 1: a recovery meeting. Yeah, but I'm pretty sure I heard
Speaker 1: it when I was younger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, very early recovery that
Speaker 3: parable is so spot on and also very clear. At
Speaker 3: least it was for me. You know, it was pretty
Speaker 3: clear to me by the time I heard it, and
Speaker 3: I would have heard it in the first couple months
Speaker 3: of recovery, and it had been spelled out to me
Speaker 3: fairly clearly, like here are the things that are likely
Speaker 3: to get you in trouble, and here are the things
Speaker 3: that are likely to lead you towards recovery. And so
Speaker 3: I had a very clear idea of that. And there
Speaker 3: are times I miss the simplicity and clarity of that
Speaker 3: because I think there's a phrase I've heard that sometimes
Speaker 3: the path gets narrower in some ways, and in other ways,
Speaker 3: I think the path actually gets wider. So it's kind
Speaker 3: of a interesting thing. But the idea that it gets
Speaker 3: narrower meaning that, you know, we have to continue to
Speaker 3: refine who we are and what matters to us and
Speaker 3: what's acceptable and what's not, and so that clarity can
Speaker 3: get a little bit harder. But I'd love to ask
Speaker 3: you about intuition versus instinct, because I think it can
Speaker 3: often be confusing the difference between the two. And I
Speaker 3: also think that a lot of times intuition, again particularly
Speaker 3: early in recovery, might be broken. Maybe not. I'd be
Speaker 3: curious what you think about it, because trauma often shows
Speaker 3: up as a very deep knowing that feels like what
Speaker 3: intuition can also sort of feel like. And I've heard
Speaker 3: you also describe like you never feel like working out,
Speaker 3: but you know it's really good to do, so you
Speaker 3: know your intuition there. I'm just curious how you distinguish
Speaker 3: the two and how your ability to distinguish the two
Speaker 3: has gotten better.
Speaker 1: For me, it's I mean, it's my whole life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fifty eight years old, and I am still learning how
Speaker 1: to distinguished between the two. I think I distinguish faster
Speaker 1: now than I used to. The irony of that is
Speaker 1: the way that I do that typically is with pause.
Speaker 1: So instead of reacting or responding because I don't know
Speaker 1: which one I'm going to do, if I just do it,
Speaker 1: I will take either a five minute pause, sometimes not
Speaker 1: even five minutes. Sometimes you know, maybe it's under a minute,
Speaker 1: but I will take a moment or twenty four hours
Speaker 1: if it's really unclear, and either do some self reflection,
Speaker 1: maybe do some writing, maybe get someone else's eyes on it,
Speaker 1: depending on what the situation is. Because I understand, and
Speaker 1: I am full of compassion for myself that my instinct
Speaker 1: is my survival mode and I needed it in order
Speaker 1: to survive my childhood. I don't think I would be
Speaker 1: here if I didn't have this instinct that I have.
Speaker 1: My maternal instinct is the biggest instinct I have. It
Speaker 1: is the instinct to protect my children at all costs.
Speaker 1: These instincts are really valuable. I also have an instinct
Speaker 1: for self preservation that feels even different than my survival mode,
Speaker 1: because survival just feels like every moment of every day.
Speaker 1: That self preservation thing kicks in when I'm in my
Speaker 1: own way, Like when I was in my addiction. You know,
Speaker 1: I was killing myself with lethal doses of drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1: It was that instinct for self preservation that kept me alive.
Speaker 4: Then I know that.
Speaker 1: So these instincts are useful and important, and I am
Speaker 1: grateful for them. As an adult woman, I do not
Speaker 1: need the same instincts that I needed to survive my childhood.
Speaker 1: I don't need the same instincts that I needed to
Speaker 1: survive my teenage years. Either, I didn't know the difference
Speaker 1: between my instinct and my intuition. But you know, even
Speaker 1: just that time period that I write about in Stash,
Speaker 1: what I hope to show was through the cloud of
Speaker 1: my addiction, there were periods were my intuition shown through.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of those periods, I call it
Speaker 1: a moment of grace. I stepped through and I was
Speaker 1: able to enter into treatment and start my sobriety journey.
Speaker 4: That was intuition.
Speaker 1: It felt all kinds of wrong my addictions like a person.
Speaker 1: That's how it feels to me anyway. And it talks
Speaker 1: to me and it says, you know, don't do that.
Speaker 1: They're going to take away all your drugs. You're never
Speaker 1: going to be able to sleep again. You know, that's
Speaker 1: absolutely the wrong move. Let's do this because it's not
Speaker 1: that bad. It's really not that bad. We can just
Speaker 1: do this, this and this, and then you can manage it.
Speaker 1: But my intuition was the one that was like, very clearly,
Speaker 1: you're going to die, and not only are you going
Speaker 1: to die, but these two boys that you've been fighting
Speaker 1: so hard for are going to have to bury you.
Speaker 1: So let's get you well, And those were two distinct
Speaker 1: voices to me then, and you're right now in sobriety.
Speaker 1: It's harder to distinguish between the two when it comes up.
Speaker 1: But I also have the knowing like the grandparent and
Speaker 1: that parable was telling their grandchild.
Speaker 4: You have a choice.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that before, and now I know that
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 3: When you were talking, it made me think of something
Speaker 3: you were talking about, your children. And there's a trope
Speaker 3: that goes along in recovery that says you can't get
Speaker 3: sober for anyone else. But I think anybody who's gotten
Speaker 3: sober knows that other people can often be a powerful motivation.
Speaker 3: And there's also a section in the book where you
Speaker 3: describe being fairly newly in recovery and a moment came
Speaker 3: where you suddenly wanted sobriety because it was yours. You
Speaker 3: were like, they might take my kids away, I might
Speaker 3: lose all my money, I might lose all these things,
Speaker 3: but this thing can be mine and I'm the only
Speaker 3: one that can sort of give it away. And I'm
Speaker 3: curious how you think about those two elements of like,
Speaker 3: clearly a lot of motivation coming from the love of
Speaker 3: your children, which just resonates through everything that you write,
Speaker 3: and also a moment of sort of claiming recovery indeed
Speaker 3: for ourselves. How did those two kind of come together
Speaker 3: and work for you to get you sober?
Speaker 1: You're right, there is that trope, and I've heard it
Speaker 1: a lot, and I heard it a lot in early sobriety,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really know what to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that I had gotten sober for my kids and
Speaker 1: I wasn't supposed to have.
Speaker 4: But what I think.
Speaker 1: Actually happened was I went to treatment for my kids.
Speaker 1: I think that's what happened. I think the sobriety was
Speaker 1: for me, even though in my mind my primary motivation
Speaker 1: was my children. But I think I was so disconnected
Speaker 1: from anything that could be for me at that point
Speaker 1: because I was lost. I was absolutely lost. I had
Speaker 1: given myself away in so many different areas of my
Speaker 1: life and tried to be what I thought people wanted
Speaker 1: me to be. That Laura, the you know, beautiful, fantastic, curious,
Speaker 1: you know, energetic five year old who had started editing herself,
Speaker 1: you know, when her stepfather came into her life. I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to get back to that girl. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know she still existed, but I knew my
Speaker 1: kids did. I didn't want them to lose me more
Speaker 1: than I didn't want to lose them. I didn't want
Speaker 1: them to lose me. I didn't want that to be
Speaker 1: their story, and so I absolutely went to treatment only
Speaker 1: for them. I would not have gone if I didn't
Speaker 1: have kids. I don't know if I would have been
Speaker 1: addicted if I didn't have kids.
Speaker 4: If I didn't have kids.
Speaker 1: That moment that you're talking about is really interesting because
Speaker 1: I wrote that chapter and my editor we were going
Speaker 1: back and forth, and she's like, I don't understand why
Speaker 1: you didn't take it because I present it with something
Speaker 1: that I like in that chapter that you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of comes into my world all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: and I have a moment where I could break my
Speaker 1: sobriety and take it, and I think no one would know.
Speaker 1: And she said, I don't really know why you didn't
Speaker 1: take it. So I told her what I wrote. I said,
Speaker 1: I think in that moment, I realized that this was
Speaker 1: the one thing that no one could take away from me.
Speaker 1: My identity was shot. Like if I wasn't his wife,
Speaker 1: if I wasn't their mom, if I wasn't the PTA president,
Speaker 1: if I wasn't the board member, I didn't know who
Speaker 1: I was. Everything I had was a role, everything except
Speaker 1: for writer. But I wasn't in touch with that then.
Speaker 1: And so there was this like lightning bolt moment where
Speaker 1: I realized that this is something that I can have.
Speaker 1: But I can be this. I can be a sober,
Speaker 1: recovered woman, I can be a woman in recovery or
Speaker 1: a person. It doesn't need to be genderfied, and I
Speaker 1: can be this person and that's who I am. And
Speaker 1: she's like, you have to write that, you have to
Speaker 1: put that in there, because that's really powerful, and I
Speaker 1: was like it is and she's like, yes, that gives
Speaker 1: us for the people that are looking in the window
Speaker 1: of your life, then that makes us feel safe knowing
Speaker 1: that you've had this realization. And there are lots of
Speaker 1: bits in the book like that that I just wrote
Speaker 1: what I felt then. But you know, that's kind of
Speaker 1: in a way, popping out and giving perspective to the story,
Speaker 1: which I really didn't want to do a lot. I
Speaker 1: really want it to be really sensorial and active, you know,
Speaker 1: first person and kind of take you on this journey.
Speaker 4: And that's one of the few.
Speaker 1: Times where I have perspective in the story and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there in my fabulous home, which can all be
Speaker 1: taken away from me in a minute, you know, with
Speaker 1: my kids, who could be taken away from me. With
Speaker 1: the realization that by giving away this thing that I
Speaker 1: really wanted to im vibe, I've given myself something that
Speaker 1: no one can take away.
Speaker 3: It makes me think about something that comes to mind
Speaker 3: often for me me, which is we talk about consequences
Speaker 3: as an important part of recovery, and I think they are.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think, you know, if everything's going well,
Speaker 3: who would give up something that we all love as
Speaker 3: much as our substances, Right, So consequences have a role,
Speaker 3: but they're clearly not sufficient because we all know people
Speaker 3: whose consequences are staggering and on they go right all
Speaker 3: the way to death. And so you know, I've often
Speaker 3: thought about that, and I've sort of thought about like
Speaker 3: there's something about consequence and hope, like they both need
Speaker 3: to be there sort of simultaneously in a way that's
Speaker 3: the sort of fertile ground. But when I read that
Speaker 3: with you, I also realized that there was a point
Speaker 3: where for me, sobriety went from a vision of what
Speaker 3: I was getting rid of to what I was becoming
Speaker 3: or could become. There was not a day in there, right,
Speaker 3: but there was at some point where I went, oh,
Speaker 3: this is not just so that I don't go to jail,
Speaker 3: and this is not just so that I don't die,
Speaker 3: and it's not just because I haven't had anywhere to live,
Speaker 3: and it's because, like I'm starting to get a sense
Speaker 3: that like I could become the person I would want
Speaker 3: to be and I could become a happy person. And
Speaker 3: for me, that was again not a moment, but an
Speaker 3: important shift that occurred somewhere in early recovery.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, I agree.
Speaker 1: There's this kind of theme that I had that year
Speaker 1: that was not as evident to me in the beginning
Speaker 1: of the year, and more evident towards the end of
Speaker 1: choosing the possibility of happiness. Yeah, because I was enduring.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was in the hallway and I
Speaker 1: had no idea what door would open or when or
Speaker 1: if a door would open. And to continue on in
Speaker 1: that place because I would have faith eventually that a
Speaker 1: door would open and behind that door might be happiness,
Speaker 1: was better than staying where I was. Where I was
Speaker 1: so terribly unhappy. Yeah, not just because I was in
Speaker 1: this addiction. It was because I was so far away
Speaker 1: from my authentic self. I needed the drugs and alcohol
Speaker 1: in order to show up for this life that was
Speaker 1: so inauthentic.
Speaker 4: I did. I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have wind it otherwise. And it was just
Speaker 1: like increasing unhappiness on a daily because I was getting
Speaker 1: so mired in this bog where I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: find happiness.
Speaker 3: I want to go back to something you said a
Speaker 3: couple of minutes ago, because you were talking about that
Speaker 3: everything in your life was a role. Being a parent
Speaker 3: was a role, being the good wife was a role,
Speaker 3: Being the PTA president was a role. I think I
Speaker 3: heard you say being a writer is not a role. Yes,
Speaker 3: And the reason I ask it is that I think
Speaker 3: as creative people we can often get at least I
Speaker 3: can attached to my ability or my role as a
Speaker 3: creative person, becoming part of my identity in not a
Speaker 3: good way. And so I'm curious for you what that
Speaker 3: means that being a writer's not a role.
Speaker 1: It certainly can be a role. Absolutely, it can be
Speaker 1: a role. It can be a job, and it's just
Speaker 1: not how I view it for myself. It's the only
Speaker 1: thing besides being a reader, which is also can be
Speaker 1: a job. But I'm talking about reading for pleasure. I'm
Speaker 1: also talking about writing for pleasure and not necessarily writing
Speaker 1: for a job.
Speaker 4: But that can be both.
Speaker 1: Like I can write for money and I love it.
Speaker 1: So there's those two things. But I can be a
Speaker 1: reader and a writer by myself. It's not dependent on
Speaker 1: any relationship that I have with anyone. Unless I'm talking
Speaker 1: about writing for money. Then other people come in because
Speaker 1: they need to pay me, so then there's another there's
Speaker 1: a relationship there. But my identity, the way I have
Speaker 1: identified since I was a little kid, is as a
Speaker 1: reader and a writer. That's who I am, and that's
Speaker 1: with people around. That's with no one around. That's money,
Speaker 1: that's no money, It doesn't matter. I do this because
Speaker 1: it's oxygen, because I have to, because I love to,
Speaker 1: and it was hard for me to kind of what's
Speaker 1: the word I'm looking for, like distill that down to
Speaker 1: these two things.
Speaker 4: This recovering person.
Speaker 1: That I am, it's one thing that's not dependent upon
Speaker 1: other people. This is not something that anyone can give
Speaker 1: me and not something that someone can take away. From me,
Speaker 1: as is being a reader and a writer. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly they could take away the utensils and the books,
Speaker 1: but they can't take away that essence of me.
Speaker 4: This is what I love to do. This is what
Speaker 4: I would do.
Speaker 1: You know, if people say, like, what would you do
Speaker 1: if you know you could do this one thing for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life, this would be it. I
Speaker 1: would do it regardless. It's beyond love. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it's just oxygen for me. It's part of me. It
Speaker 1: is in many many ways who I am.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about this idea of it becoming a role
Speaker 3: because I'm sure you know lots of people like this,
Speaker 3: and I've been a person like this at different points
Speaker 3: with different things, where all of a sudden, the identity
Speaker 3: to be that, or the pressure to be that, or
Speaker 3: the pressure to be good at that or be seen
Speaker 3: as good at that, suddenly starts to kill the thing itself,
Speaker 3: and it often then blocks us from being perhaps someone
Speaker 3: who loves to write, because the judgment process is so strong,
Speaker 3: the fear of not being good at it, the idea
Speaker 3: that like, well, if I'm not good at this, then
Speaker 3: who am I? Then cuts you off from the thing
Speaker 3: itself and I think what you're describing is how you've
Speaker 3: managed to distill those two things apart, and how they
Speaker 3: do come together sometimes naturally and they have to, but
Speaker 3: that you do have a way of tweezing them apart
Speaker 3: for yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thank you for putting it like that.
Speaker 4: It's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had, and I'm very grateful for it,
Speaker 1: great success with getting articles published and obviously the memoir published.
Speaker 1: But I write a lot more than that. Like I
Speaker 1: write all the time, and you know, some of it
Speaker 1: I send off to get published and some of it
Speaker 1: I don't. And my fulfillment is not right now dependent
Speaker 1: on getting it published or getting you know, that feedback
Speaker 1: from something that I've written. But certainly there have been
Speaker 1: moments where I've had to be mindful of how attached
Speaker 1: i am to the outcome of these things that I
Speaker 1: poured myself into. And I think, like you know, for
Speaker 1: me as a writer, I'm a personal essayist. It can
Speaker 1: start to feel a little journalistic when I'm picking things out,
Speaker 1: you know, the news, and I'm deciding to weave my
Speaker 1: experience into those things to get published, which is fine,
Speaker 1: but it's not the writing for pleasure that I love.
Speaker 1: I don't want those things to be conflated when I'm
Speaker 1: writing just because I need more published articles. I want
Speaker 1: to stay relevant. That can be quite different than Laura
Speaker 1: the writer. This is like Laura the I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the name for that, Laura professional
Speaker 1: professional writer. Yeah, and it would be good for me
Speaker 1: if my self worth weren't tied up in Laura the
Speaker 1: professional writer and could stay in Laura the writer Like
Speaker 1: that would be really good for me. So I try
Speaker 1: to really be mindful of, you know, getting right up
Speaker 1: to that line and kind of looking over at that
Speaker 1: abyss and saying, don't jump, like, let's stay over here
Speaker 1: where it's fun, where you have joy, you know, where
Speaker 1: you would do it regardless. Yeah, let's try to stay
Speaker 1: on this side of the line. And so far I've
Speaker 1: been able to do that pretty well, I think, but
Speaker 1: I'm aware that it could change and I might need
Speaker 1: to do a little bit more dancing around that to
Speaker 1: make myself right sized in that area.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah, I think it does become tricky if we're
Speaker 3: fortunate enough that the thing that we are loving doing
Speaker 3: suddenly becomes a way in which we can make a living.
Speaker 3: If we're fortunate enough to do that. I do think
Speaker 3: that the danger as it gets complicated. It's easier when
Speaker 3: it's really separated and simple, Like I just write for
Speaker 3: fun and there's no professional ambition to this at all.
Speaker 3: That's where I am with guitar, right, Like I play
Speaker 3: guitar because I just like to play guitar. I have
Speaker 3: zero ambition with it. I used to have ambition with it.
Speaker 3: I severed it with a fair amount of work. Now
Speaker 3: it's just for fun. But the podcast got interesting when
Speaker 3: I started going, oh, well, I do love doing this
Speaker 3: and I want to keep doing it, and I might
Speaker 3: be able to do it as a way of making
Speaker 3: a living. I'm curious, what about writing is joyful for you? Like,
Speaker 3: how do you get yourself into a joyful state with
Speaker 3: it versus a performative state?
Speaker 1: I write, and I'm sure you've heard this because you've
Speaker 1: had a lot of authors on your show. There is
Speaker 1: a state that occurs. I call it the flow, and
Speaker 1: there's something else that takes over. I feel like a conduit,
Speaker 1: you know. I kind of make myself write until I
Speaker 1: get to this point. It's actually not very long. I
Speaker 1: can usually hit it and maybe it's like a stride,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like a
Speaker 1: hose that was, you know, just trickling, and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I've turned it on. Not a fire hose,
Speaker 1: but like a garden hose, and there's a nice, full
Speaker 1: flow that's not of my doing. And once I achieve
Speaker 1: that state, it's like I'm levitating. It's like I'm surrounded
Speaker 1: by light. Like Scott Will, bless his heart. He does
Speaker 1: the grocery shopping, he does the cooking. He started this
Speaker 1: when I decided to go plant based three years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's one of his many ways that he takes
Speaker 1: care of me. So at seven at night, flow or not,
Speaker 1: he's ready for me to come downstairs because dinner's ready.
Speaker 1: And if I'm still in the flow, it's really hard
Speaker 1: for me to pull myself away. It's joy, but it's
Speaker 1: beyond that.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm a writer.
Speaker 1: I should have the words, but it's hard to describe.
Speaker 1: There is a need in addition to the joy, unlike
Speaker 1: anything I've ever felt before. It's different than my need
Speaker 1: to be with my kids, which is also really powerful.
Speaker 1: This is a need to stay in that creative flow place.
Speaker 1: And I don't have that experience in any other part
Speaker 1: of my life.
Speaker 3: Let's change directions here. I want to talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about the book, and I want to start by
Speaker 3: reading something that you write very early on in the beginning,
Speaker 3: which I think is going to lead us into some
Speaker 3: other discussions. But you say that Stash takes place at
Speaker 3: the intersection of race, privilege and addiction. What do you
Speaker 3: mean by that? What is your intersection of race, privilege
Speaker 3: and addiction.
Speaker 1: So at the time, during this book, during the March
Speaker 1: of two thousand and eight through December of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, I was living the life that I always
Speaker 1: thought if I had the big house, if I had
Speaker 1: I don't even know, if I knew about private jets,
Speaker 1: but later on when I did, like, if I had
Speaker 1: access to private jets, if I had, you know, a
Speaker 1: housekeeper or servants, or if I could just go shopping
Speaker 1: and buy whatever I wanted, then everything would be okay
Speaker 1: then and I would be fine. Then I wouldn't ever
Speaker 1: want for anything. And I was living that life. I
Speaker 1: was living this dream life, and I felt incredibly guilty
Speaker 1: because I wasn't happy, because I was enduring this extremely
Speaker 1: privileged life waiting to get to the other side of what.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: But I was waiting, waiting until my kids were older,
Speaker 1: waiting until my you know now it's husband wasn't so busy,
Speaker 1: Waiting until I actually liked all of the shopping and
Speaker 1: the spa days and the jewelry shows like my peeris did.
Speaker 1: I was waiting, but nothing was coming, and I was
Speaker 1: miserable in this life. Not to say that I was
Speaker 1: miserable all the time. Certainly there were periods of joy.
Speaker 1: There were really fun times and times where my energy
Speaker 1: matched what it looked like, you know, But the year
Speaker 1: that I write about, they were very few and far between.
Speaker 1: You know. It was mainly living in fear and living
Speaker 1: like that. So I had this very very privileged life.
Speaker 1: I'm a black woman. I grew up poor, not destitute,
Speaker 1: but I grew up poor, like welfare poor, like shoplifting
Speaker 1: groceries poor. When I was a kid, my mother used
Speaker 1: to do that. And what it meant to be black
Speaker 1: in the world for me was different than a lot
Speaker 1: of my peers because I had grown up in all
Speaker 1: these white spaces. My mother was shoplifting groceries, but she
Speaker 1: managed to send me to independent schools and all these
Speaker 1: independent schools were almost entirely white spaces. For a while,
Speaker 1: I was the only black kid in my school and
Speaker 1: then later on in my class, but never had a
Speaker 1: black classmate, And that was okay. I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: that growing up. That's not true. I didn't feel like
Speaker 1: that when I was a little kid. As I started
Speaker 1: growing up, it became very aware of being black in
Speaker 1: those spaces. It didn't matter as much when I was little,
Speaker 1: I don't think, or at least to my surroundings, it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to matter as much.
Speaker 4: So I grew up poor.
Speaker 1: But I'm this black woman and now I live this
Speaker 1: very privileged life and incomes my addiction full force.
Speaker 4: So I do what I've always done.
Speaker 1: Because as we talked about identify as a reader, I
Speaker 1: looked for books that would give me the experience of
Speaker 1: a black woman who lived a privileged life who was
Speaker 1: mired in an addiction. And I found some, but none
Speaker 1: with all three. So I found stories of black women
Speaker 1: living with addiction, but those stories involved prostitution and drug
Speaker 1: dens and homelessness. I found stories of privilege and addiction,
Speaker 1: all written by white women, each and every one of them.
Speaker 1: I also found, you know, stories of motherhood and divorce,
Speaker 1: and like there were other things that were interwoven, but
Speaker 1: none with everything, none from that particular intersection. And even
Speaker 1: you know, Eric, there weren't any movies or TV shows
Speaker 1: either that depicted someone like me going through something like
Speaker 1: what I was going through.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: If there were a woman, you know, fighting through an
Speaker 1: addiction with the privileged life looking to be in her
Speaker 1: children's lives, they were white women.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Period.
Speaker 1: So that's why I wanted to put that at the
Speaker 1: very beginning of the book, to set people up to
Speaker 1: understand that this is what sets this book apart from
Speaker 1: any other book you've read this year or maybe even
Speaker 1: the last decade, because there just aren't very many like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think in general, if you look at
Speaker 3: the phrase people use as quit lit, right, yeah, which
Speaker 3: it means well written books about addiction, you talk about
Speaker 3: how there's almost no one of color in that sort
Speaker 3: of top tier of those books, or maybe even many
Speaker 3: tiers of those books.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was writing Stash, I had to write a
Speaker 1: book proposal, which was just exhausting in a no way.
Speaker 1: But in this proposal I had to come up with
Speaker 1: three comparisons. Because you know, publishers want to see books
Speaker 1: that are like the ones you're pitching, that have done well,
Speaker 1: So it can't just be books like the one you're pitching,
Speaker 1: because they want to see that they've sold copies. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any, not one, not one book. Actually
Speaker 1: I did, That's not true. I found one book that
Speaker 1: it done well in two thousand and seven, called A
Speaker 1: Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown. She has another book
Speaker 1: coming out. She's fantastic, but it needed to be current.
Speaker 4: This needed to be.
Speaker 1: A twenty twenty book or twenty twenty one at that
Speaker 1: point that was doing well, that was in my genre,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have one comparison, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: that was outrageous, honestly that up until mine, there hasn't
Speaker 1: been an emphasis on stories of color in this genre,
Speaker 1: which means for someone like me who was just like
Speaker 1: looking to get sober in two thousand and eight, discreetly
Speaker 1: that maybe there aren't people like me, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: sobriety isn't for me because I don't see it on TV,
Speaker 1: I don't see it in the movies, and I don't
Speaker 1: read about it in the books.
Speaker 3: Yep, or mag is that changing?
Speaker 1: I mean, if people buy stash it will.
Speaker 3: You said, you don't. You don't like selling, but you're
Speaker 3: good at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm not joking, Like, Okay, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be stashed, but people, specifically white people, really white women,
Speaker 1: need to purchase books that are outside of their genre
Speaker 1: in order to show publishers that there's a need for them.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And so the people that have been purchasing stashing giving
Speaker 1: me feedback. I'm so grateful. There are so many people.
Speaker 1: There are white men, there are white women, there are
Speaker 1: you know, Asian Latino. A lot of Latino women have
Speaker 1: been coming back to me and saying thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for this story because their stories aren't reflected. Asian
Speaker 1: women don't have their stories reflected back to them like
Speaker 1: this dearth of voices of color isn't specific to black women.
Speaker 1: But if a book like mine sells, publisher will be
Speaker 1: looking for more stories like mine.
Speaker 3: Yep. And you're right that you are representing an interesting
Speaker 3: intersection that you don't see a whole lot. Yeah, as
Speaker 3: you were talking, I was thinking about myself, and I
Speaker 3: was like, well, you know, mine is a pretty common story.
Speaker 3: Upper middle class white kid gets himself into trouble. I
Speaker 3: was reflecting back though, and these days it's pretty common
Speaker 3: to be an opioid addict, but in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: to be an upper middle class white kid with a
Speaker 3: heroin addiction was a strange thing. It had largely been
Speaker 3: an inner city. And I'm not trying to say that
Speaker 3: our experiences are linked, because that was just a small
Speaker 3: part of my life, where yours is the identity. But
Speaker 3: I do think that there is this desire to see
Speaker 3: ourselves well reflected. And you can get by if you
Speaker 3: don't see yourself well reflected, but it takes a lot
Speaker 3: more translation. There's an article you wrote about AA about
Speaker 3: you know, like I didn't believe in it, but it
Speaker 3: still worked. I'd like to explore that more. But part
Speaker 3: of the challenge is you are having to sit there
Speaker 3: and go, well, I've got to sort of take all
Speaker 3: this in through my lens and sort of translate it.
Speaker 3: And I remember that a little bit about recovery for
Speaker 3: me because when I went to NA, I did not
Speaker 3: feel like I fit. It was black street culture. When
Speaker 3: I went to AA, I didn't fit because they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we don't talk about drugs here. I mean, this was
Speaker 3: a long time ago, and so it wasn't that I
Speaker 3: couldn't find a way to make the different stories fit.
Speaker 3: But I had to sort of cobble a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And.
Speaker 3: So I think it's why work like yours is important
Speaker 3: and a diversity of voices out there is important so
Speaker 3: that people don't have to do as much of that,
Speaker 3: because everybody's looking for a way to unidentify in early recovery, right,
Speaker 3: We're all looking for a way to be like not me.
Speaker 3: I don't actually need this. I don't fit here. Everyone
Speaker 3: wants that, And the harder you have to do to
Speaker 3: find how you fit it's additional labor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I don't fit here. And
Speaker 1: here's why.
Speaker 4: It's you. It's you.
Speaker 3: It's you, it's you.
Speaker 4: It's that story you just told.
Speaker 1: Is this book you just gave me where I'm not
Speaker 1: anywhere in these pages?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 1: And I mean absolutely I was looking for an excuse.
Speaker 1: You know, it's still tough. I had a kind of
Speaker 1: come to Jesus moment with twelve step recovery in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: because I mean I felt like I had been poisoned
Speaker 1: that year. I was weak, I was exhausted, I was
Speaker 1: in pain. I always wake up happy, you know, I
Speaker 1: just do. I always go to bed peaceful. And I
Speaker 1: was not doing either of those things, you know, starting
Speaker 1: with Breonna Taylor, and then Ahmaud Aubrey, and then of
Speaker 1: course George Floyd, and there were more in between, and
Speaker 1: I was just having a really hard time and it
Speaker 1: felt like not an attack, but it felt abrasive to
Speaker 1: be in a room where I needed to recover, where
Speaker 1: my experience wasn't being reflected back to me. And in
Speaker 1: most of the meetings I go to, if there's more
Speaker 1: than one person of color, it's like one or two.
Speaker 1: Everybody else is white. That's just how it is where
Speaker 1: I live.
Speaker 3: And that's a combination of your color and your privilege, right,
Speaker 3: because I mean, I don't know what it's like now,
Speaker 3: and I'm a little bit distinct and I'm white, So
Speaker 3: I'm going to be walking on on a plank that
Speaker 3: I want to be careful on, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But when I was in twelve step recovery, there were
Speaker 3: certainly meetings that I would go to that would be
Speaker 3: predominantly black meetings. Yes, it wasn't like there was one
Speaker 3: of them. There were a bunch of them, but it
Speaker 3: was very duh part of town specific yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, and on the other side of the hill
Speaker 1: from me, got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you're in LA so the other side of
Speaker 3: the hill might as well be you know, a different city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could fly to Tucson faster.
Speaker 3: I can get that exactly. In Columbus you could be like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it's such an extra ten minutes, no big deal, right.
Speaker 3: But in your case, so based on where you live,
Speaker 3: which is sort of a function of privilege, then based
Speaker 3: on color, you're constantly in a space where significant parts
Speaker 3: of your identity are not reflected exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And thank you for mapping that out, because that is
Speaker 1: important because I don't want people to think there's not
Speaker 1: black recovery. There absolutely is, and I do go to
Speaker 1: those meetings sometime. The other thing twenty twenty did, which
Speaker 1: was really incredible for twelve step recovery was to start
Speaker 1: virtual people of color meetings and that was extremely helpful.
Speaker 1: So some of those meetings are still in my repertoire.
Speaker 1: I will still attend those meetings virtually. There's one in
Speaker 1: London that's fantastic and it's like one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: people of color, all different kinds of people, of color
Speaker 1: and some white people as well who just really enjoy
Speaker 1: the space. But we meet and we talk very frankly,
Speaker 1: We share frankly rather about our experience in the world
Speaker 1: as people of color, as people dealing with an addiction
Speaker 1: or alcoholism or alcohol use disorder, however you want to
Speaker 1: term it. And that feels good. That feels really good.
Speaker 3: So I feel like I took you slightly on a
Speaker 3: detour for a second there. I want to go back
Speaker 3: to you feeling tired, exhausted, and not reflected in the
Speaker 3: recovery area that you were in. Yes, we could say
Speaker 3: it would be akin to being I'm just trying to
Speaker 3: make up parallel. You could be in a rural area, right,
Speaker 3: and you would be the only black person there, at
Speaker 3: least in rural Ohio, right, And you wouldn't have the
Speaker 3: option of just being like, well, I'll just drive over there.
Speaker 3: So you are isolated. So how did you respond? What
Speaker 3: did you do?
Speaker 1: You know? Another comparison would be like if I were
Speaker 1: the only parent struggling with something with my kids and
Speaker 1: I was in a room full of people who didn't
Speaker 1: have kids, to be able to express my experience but
Speaker 1: not have it reflect it back to me would feel isolating,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. I would express my experience as
Speaker 1: it was happening, and then people would either do one
Speaker 1: of two things. They would either try to fix it
Speaker 1: for me, they would try three things. Actually, they would
Speaker 1: try to have me teach them how to be better
Speaker 1: about it. What can I do was a really common
Speaker 1: question that I got then.
Speaker 4: Or they would let me know.
Speaker 1: No one ever told this to me, but they would
Speaker 1: let me know, either through their shares or body language,
Speaker 1: that they didn't appreciate me sharing about race in these
Speaker 1: meetings and what was happening in our country. And so
Speaker 1: I just wanted to go. You know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to educate you. I don't want you to ask me
Speaker 1: how you can fix it, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: be around you if you don't want me there sharing
Speaker 1: my because that's all I'm going to do right now,
Speaker 1: is I'm going to share my experience because this is
Speaker 1: leading me closer to a drink. This is the most
Speaker 1: bereft I've been in my sobriety. Yeah, and so then I,
Speaker 1: you know, I got an email from someone for one
Speaker 1: of those people of color meetings. This amazing thing happened.
Speaker 1: This was later after I was already in you know,
Speaker 1: really regularly going to these people of color meetings.
Speaker 4: Can I tell you a really quick story, please, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was January sixth, two years ago, right, that was
Speaker 1: the insurrection.
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 1: And I was watching the news because I wanted to
Speaker 1: see the vote. I forgot what it's called. I want
Speaker 1: to say consecrate, but I don't think that's the right word.
Speaker 1: But they solidified the election, right, so Mike Pence was
Speaker 1: going to cast the deciding vote and then Joe Biden
Speaker 1: would be officially the president.
Speaker 4: So I had the TV.
Speaker 1: I always had the TV on, so I had the
Speaker 1: TV on and I was like kind of watching, and
Speaker 1: then I saw what was happening. And all I could
Speaker 1: think while I was watching all these white people storming
Speaker 1: the stpths with signs and weapons and you know. And
Speaker 1: then the more I saw what the police response was,
Speaker 1: I was like, if they were black, there'd be blood
Speaker 1: all over those steps. They would have never gotten up there.
Speaker 1: And I started to spiral like hard. And as I'm
Speaker 1: sitting in front of my computer just like I'm doing now,
Speaker 1: and I got a notification that there was an email
Speaker 1: and it said and I'm smiling if you can't hear that.
Speaker 1: The email said emergency people of Color meeting right now,
Speaker 1: and I clicked on the link Eric, and you know how,
Speaker 1: people start to pop in right to the zoom room.
Speaker 1: I popped in and I saw others popping in, and
Speaker 1: it was three hundred people. I stayed on there for
Speaker 1: an hour and a half and it was the most
Speaker 1: healing balm of discussion and sorrow and expression. I could
Speaker 1: have never gotten that in one of my regular meetings.
Speaker 1: This is why I love twelve step Recovery too, because
Speaker 1: this is what we did. We morphed, we figured it out,
Speaker 1: and we made a space for the people.
Speaker 4: Who needed it. There are all these specialty.
Speaker 1: Meetings and they're kind of controversial and people have feelings
Speaker 1: about them.
Speaker 4: But my goodness, you know that meeting.
Speaker 1: I was as close to a drink as I'd ever
Speaker 1: been in sobriety at that moment, not literally, because I
Speaker 1: don't have anything in the house and I was at home.
Speaker 1: I would have had to get in my car and
Speaker 1: drive and blah blah blah or order it, I guess.
Speaker 1: But that meeting, it just saved me that day, and
Speaker 1: I felt seen, I felt that relief that I needed.
Speaker 1: You know, I was deeply disturbed by what was happening,
Speaker 1: and that disturbance that is the you know, it's anxiety.
Speaker 1: I guess there's something in our literature that says, when
Speaker 1: we are disturbed, if our first need is to quiet it,
Speaker 1: no matter what the cause.
Speaker 4: And I know.
Speaker 1: Exactly what quiets that disturbance. I know how many of
Speaker 1: them there are in a bottle, I know what shape
Speaker 1: they are, I know what sound they make, I know
Speaker 1: how they feel in my hand, and I know how
Speaker 1: long they take to hit my bloodstream. Like I know
Speaker 1: what quiet is that disturbance. But that's not what I wanted,
Speaker 1: and it's not what I got. What I got was
Speaker 1: something that was profoundly more effective and long lasting.
Speaker 3: I think that's a beautiful story. I kind of was
Speaker 3: getting chills as you were sharing it. It's so beautiful
Speaker 3: and it is unique to being black, and it's also
Speaker 3: not in that we all do really need. And what
Speaker 3: recovery in the right way can give us is that
Speaker 3: feeling of not being alone. And I think your analogy
Speaker 3: of being a parent in a room full of people
Speaker 3: who don't have kids is a great one. Maybe they
Speaker 3: have specialty meetings for parents and not. I don't know
Speaker 3: they didn't once upon a time. You've got it all
Speaker 3: in LA right, probably specialty meeting for fifty year old
Speaker 3: men who have mohawks. Right, I could probably find my
Speaker 3: own tribe there. But if you walked into a twelve
Speaker 3: step meeting and you were saying, I'm really struggling, my
Speaker 3: kid is really having a hard time, and I feel
Speaker 3: like drinking, the people in the room are going to listen, right,
Speaker 3: They're going to listen, but they're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to make you feel like you're not alone with
Speaker 3: it in the same way. And so I think that's
Speaker 3: a really good analogy, and I do think it's why
Speaker 3: specialty meetings can be helpful. And it's interesting. We run
Speaker 3: a program called Spiritual Habits, and part of the Spiritual
Speaker 3: Habits program is we divide the big group up into
Speaker 3: small groups, and those small groups meet together once a week.
Speaker 3: And we've had a debate amongst the one you Feed
Speaker 3: team a number of times about should we do specialty
Speaker 3: meetings specialty groups, And we did do one once because
Speaker 3: we offered a bunch of BIPOC scholarships. And I then
Speaker 3: talk to people who I respect who said we think
Speaker 3: you should offer that as a specialty, you should have
Speaker 3: a bipod group if people want to opt into it,
Speaker 3: And they gave all the reasons why, and we did
Speaker 3: that and I think it turned out well well. That
Speaker 3: then led to the question of should there be others,
Speaker 3: you know, should there be one for people in recovery,
Speaker 3: should there be one for divorced mothers? And all of
Speaker 3: a sudden you start getting into the debate that I'm
Speaker 3: sure happens, which is, well, how finely did you start
Speaker 3: to divide that? And isn't part of this that we
Speaker 3: hear different perspectives and we get to know different people,
Speaker 3: And so it's been an interesting debate. And I feel
Speaker 3: right now comfortable with for reasons of safety issues and
Speaker 3: feel like, as a black person in a white space,
Speaker 3: you can't be full of yourself. I do think that
Speaker 3: our decision to do a bipod group is the right one.
Speaker 3: How far we want to splinter that further, I still
Speaker 3: don't think we know, because I think these questions are
Speaker 3: probably the same thing that swirls around specialty meetings.
Speaker 1: It is really interesting and I used to kind of
Speaker 1: scoff at specialty meetings. You know, there's actually a really
Speaker 1: great writers in Recovery meeting that I like. But when
Speaker 1: I first heard about it, I was like, they don't
Speaker 1: need their own meeting. That's silly, those writers. They're fine
Speaker 1: just going to regular meetings. And there is something that
Speaker 1: is especially othering about visible diversity versus an invisible othering.
Speaker 1: There are visible disabilities and invisible disabilities, right, so I
Speaker 1: think there's something especially othering, particularly othering about the visible ones.
Speaker 1: That's my opinion. I don't know if that's true. I
Speaker 1: think walking in as a black woman sitting in a
Speaker 1: meeting next to a woman who's also a mom, who's
Speaker 1: also struggling with exactly the same addiction, who's also going
Speaker 1: through a divorce, I do feel like she's going to
Speaker 1: find herself more easily in that white meeting than I will.
Speaker 4: I just do.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: your mental gymnastics thing holds, like, I love these meetings.
Speaker 1: I start at one of these meetings that I go
Speaker 1: to every week, and I started it with my best
Speaker 1: friend who's not white but she's not black, and we
Speaker 1: created this space where all these white people come and
Speaker 1: really kind of get into the work and I love
Speaker 1: the work, and I love that it's very important to me.
Speaker 4: It's not an either or for me, it's an and.
Speaker 3: That really sort of sums it up for me, which is,
Speaker 3: there is a time to be with people who are
Speaker 3: very much like me, who can understand me and my specificities.
Speaker 3: And it's really helpful for me to be able to
Speaker 3: see the commonalities that I have with all people. You know,
Speaker 3: I need both those things for me to feel like
Speaker 3: I'm truly both supported and being supportive. I want to
Speaker 3: ask you about an article you wrote whose headline made
Speaker 3: me laugh, which was, did I get sober ten years
Speaker 3: too soon? Today's weed is making me wonder Now you
Speaker 3: and I have a different relationship to marijuana. You had
Speaker 3: an aversive relationship with it because of that your I
Speaker 3: believe it was your stepfather abused you when he smoked weed, right. I,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, love the stuff, like just loved it.
Speaker 3: And the fact that you can now shop for it
Speaker 3: and it's like a brand experience is just it blows
Speaker 3: my mind. But I think this basic idea of we
Speaker 3: hear about whatever the new thing is or the different
Speaker 3: type of drug or the way it's working for other people,
Speaker 3: and it's natural that some part of us wakes up.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about it yesterday after I was reading that.
Speaker 3: I was like, it's kind of like my addiction goes
Speaker 3: way quiet. It's almost like an old lady in a
Speaker 3: nursing home and there's all sorts of noise going on
Speaker 3: around her and people talking, and she just sits there.
Speaker 3: Nothing gets a reaction out of her. And then like
Speaker 3: an old song that she used to love comes on
Speaker 3: the radio, and it's all of a sudden, for a
Speaker 3: few seconds, it's like she starts bopping her head to
Speaker 3: the music, you know. And that's what today's weed can occasionally.
Speaker 2: Do to me.
Speaker 3: It sort of just wakes that little thing up. I
Speaker 3: was in New York City recently. I mean, you can't
Speaker 3: go two feet in that city without it smelling like marijuana.
Speaker 3: I cannot believe how everywhere it is everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was just in New York too, and I
Speaker 1: was struck by the same thing, like every time I
Speaker 1: got out of an uber. Actually, we were in our
Speaker 1: uber on the Brooklyn Bridge with all the windows up,
Speaker 1: and there was this car next to us, and there
Speaker 1: was so much weed coming out of that car. It
Speaker 1: enveloped us. It was crazy. Yeah, you're right. I never
Speaker 1: liked weed. I never got it, obviously. I tried it,
Speaker 1: not obviously, but I did try it, and each time
Speaker 1: I tried it, it just made me like wired and paranoid.
Speaker 1: It did exactly the opposite of what everybody else professed
Speaker 1: to feel. But I have this podcast. I think I
Speaker 1: write about it in the article called the Cut. It's
Speaker 1: not my podcast, it's one of my favorite podcasts. And
Speaker 1: they were talking, they had interviewing these two moms who
Speaker 1: were saying how much easier the zoo was with their
Speaker 1: weed gummy, Like they could take their kids every day
Speaker 1: they just pop a weed gummy and it was really
Speaker 1: pleasant and it flew by their time there.
Speaker 4: And I was like, wait a.
Speaker 1: Minute, do you mean to tell me that I could
Speaker 1: have been eating weed gummies instead of popping ambient at
Speaker 1: night and having a pleasant time with my kids, instead
Speaker 1: of managing an addiction.
Speaker 4: This is what my head told me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that sounded fun, like that sounded like something
Speaker 1: I could get with. Was like, this was not the
Speaker 1: weed of my stepfather who kept the shoe box full
Speaker 1: of stems and seeds.
Speaker 4: And whatever under his bed.
Speaker 1: Yes, this was a gummy bear you know, this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, a tensure of oil that you could drop
Speaker 1: in under your tongue.
Speaker 3: This was soul oil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounded extremely appealing and mellow. Yeah, and just
Speaker 1: like dope. Like I was genuinely pissed that this wasn't
Speaker 1: created when my kids were little.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: But then I go on.
Speaker 1: In the article and I interview a couple of people
Speaker 1: about their we'd experience because I want to know, like,
Speaker 1: is this something I should consider?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, my kids weren't little anymore than either, so
Speaker 1: I couldn't have justified it the same way I would have,
Speaker 1: But I wanted to know if I was really missing
Speaker 1: out on something. And I got some experiences relate back
Speaker 1: to me that told me that I was absolutely in
Speaker 1: the right place.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you ask a really fundamental question in that
Speaker 3: article that I think is a really useful one, which
Speaker 3: is like, if this is so good, you wouldn't do
Speaker 3: it all of the time?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: And that immediately to me surfaces the addict in me
Speaker 3: because I have this exact same thought. You know, I
Speaker 3: did my own version of this. So I got sober
Speaker 3: at twenty four from Heroin, and I was a homeless
Speaker 3: heroin addict, and I mean we've talked, you kind of
Speaker 3: know my story a little bit. I weighed one hundred pounds,
Speaker 3: I had hepatia, see very low bottom, and stayed sober
Speaker 3: about seven eight years. And I suddenly was doing very well.
Speaker 3: I was making I mean compared to what I used
Speaker 3: to make a fortune. I lived in a nice part
Speaker 3: of town. I was a good dad. I mean, everything
Speaker 3: was going pretty well. And my brain started saying to me, like, well,
Speaker 3: you were young, and of course heroin is a terrible idea.
Speaker 3: Like no, I mean, anybody knows heroin's a bad idea.
Speaker 3: So maybe alcohol. Now I drank alcoholically, but alcohol is
Speaker 3: similar to today's weed in that you can look around
Speaker 3: and see people imbibing it all around you, singing its
Speaker 3: praises and seems like it's okay. It wasn't for me
Speaker 3: spoiler alert, you know, I had to come back to recovery.
Speaker 3: But that was my version of that where I went like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's not that there's a formulation of a drug that's
Speaker 3: suddenly going to work for me. It's the entire mechanism
Speaker 3: and process that goes on inside me in relation to
Speaker 3: something that can make me feel that much better that quickly.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and that's the thing for me, right when
Speaker 1: it's the instantaneous Yes, I know I'm in trouble. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know I'm in trouble. It is for me, it's
Speaker 1: got to be slow and steady, which I hate.
Speaker 4: Yes, I want that fast fix, yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I know that when it comes like that,
Speaker 1: this something for me to look at, and it honestly,
Speaker 1: as much as I may want it, it might not
Speaker 1: be for me.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: There's also just a risk reward profile. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, let's say I could have a couple of
Speaker 3: drinks a week. Okay, so I would have one evening
Speaker 3: a week where I felt, you know, a lot better
Speaker 3: for a couple hours. Okay, that's nice. That would be lovely.
Speaker 3: What's the downside to that? Oh everything my entire life.
Speaker 3: That risk reward benefit helps me a lot. Sort through
Speaker 3: that too. I'm like, well, supposing you could do it moderately,
Speaker 3: which you can't, but just suppose you could.
Speaker 1: So what?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I love that article. It just made me laugh. But
Speaker 3: I think surface is a really fundamental point that all
Speaker 3: of us who maintain long term sobriety have to figure out,
Speaker 3: is how to work with that voice that says there's
Speaker 3: a different way to do.
Speaker 1: This, because every ten years something will come along that
Speaker 1: will have people extolling the virtues and the upside of blank. Yep,
Speaker 1: And we really we don't really have to do anything,
Speaker 1: but it would be good to really look at what
Speaker 1: it is that people are you able to do and
Speaker 1: not do, you know, just to examine it rather yep, yep.
Speaker 4: Before jumping in.
Speaker 3: Yep, I want to jump to the end of your book.
Speaker 3: We haven't talked about it nearly enough, so I hope
Speaker 3: that's okay that you know we've talked around it. It's
Speaker 3: a beautiful book. I'm sure people from hearing you talk
Speaker 3: will get a sense of how articulate you are. But
Speaker 3: a big part of the book happens as you are
Speaker 3: going through a divorce, and there's a real sense near
Speaker 3: the end of the book where you are getting differing
Speaker 3: advice about how sort of lack of a better word,
Speaker 3: how hard to go after your husband, and how much
Speaker 3: to sort of ask for money wise, wealth wise, all
Speaker 3: these different things, and you sort of end up working
Speaker 3: for a balance. But I just want to write something
Speaker 3: that you wrote because I think it's really beautiful, and
Speaker 3: I just love to have you expand upon it. You say,
Speaker 3: I wonder sometimes if I were to go back to
Speaker 3: that day in the hallway of Nancy's office, that being
Speaker 3: your attorney, knowing what I know now, what I ask
Speaker 3: for more, If the world was divided into winners and losers,
Speaker 3: which is a theme that comes up in the book
Speaker 3: different times for you, which one am I? Am I
Speaker 3: a loser because I should have fought for more money
Speaker 3: or more property, or am I a winner because I
Speaker 3: get to spend almost every day with my kids? And
Speaker 3: you go through various different versions of that question. I
Speaker 3: just thought i'd give you a chance to talk about
Speaker 3: that for a second, because that really really touched me.
Speaker 3: And as somebody who's unfortunately been through more than one divorce,
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with this dynamic of that. But I think
Speaker 3: it's also one that we all wrestle with in different
Speaker 3: areas of our lives, right because we're always making trade
Speaker 3: offs among things. You know, I could have more money,
Speaker 3: but that would mean I would have more time, I
Speaker 3: could have more time, you like, there's all this trying
Speaker 3: to figure it out and then knowing what's the right
Speaker 3: proportion for me, So I just would love to hear
Speaker 3: you sort of reflect on that a little bit.
Speaker 1: More specifically, with regard to the divorce, I think what
Speaker 1: happened was because, of course I was getting sober and
Speaker 1: divorced at the same time, which had I to do
Speaker 1: again what not to do at the same time.
Speaker 4: I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I had a choice, but it
Speaker 1: didn't feel like I had a choice, And the divorce
Speaker 1: was in motion and I was dying, so I had
Speaker 1: to get sober both things were happening.
Speaker 4: What I did was out.
Speaker 1: Of fear, which is like so many things in my life.
Speaker 1: I researched and found someone that I thought would keep
Speaker 1: me safe through this process, which was so foreign to me.
Speaker 1: And the other thing was I had completely isolated myself
Speaker 1: at this point in my life. Nobody really knew what
Speaker 1: was happening with me. I wasn't vulnerable with anyone. When
Speaker 1: I met with this woman of my divorce attorney. I
Speaker 1: met with her alone and didn't speak about her to
Speaker 1: anyone afterward, so there was no kind of back and
Speaker 1: forth like is this the right one for you? I
Speaker 1: made all those decisions entirely by myself, and very quickly,
Speaker 1: like in between detoxes. I started the process when I
Speaker 1: wasn't in withdrawal, and by the end of the day
Speaker 1: I was, and I needed to make a decision.
Speaker 4: So that was guiding me as well.
Speaker 1: But what I think was I chose somebody that was
Speaker 1: not the right fit for the outcome that I desired. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the outcome, the success that I envisioned, was me
Speaker 1: being comfortable, But the priority was that we were still
Speaker 1: a family, just a different kind of family. That was
Speaker 1: the success that I envisioned. That was my priority. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that I would have been happy if he
Speaker 1: had taken everything away material wise and financially and property wise.
Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't have been, but that wasn't my priority.
Speaker 1: My priority was how can I dismantle and rebuild this
Speaker 1: family in another way, or how can we do that
Speaker 1: so that it's still a family but it looks different.
Speaker 1: And as we went along, it just became more and
Speaker 1: more obvious that the path that she was laying out
Speaker 1: in front of me, I didn't think we'd be able
Speaker 1: to do that. I didn't think we'd be able to
Speaker 1: just become another kind of family. I think he would
Speaker 1: have ended up hating me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so I.
Speaker 1: Chose to really look at what is a win for
Speaker 1: me here, And if I'm honest about what's a win
Speaker 1: for me, what path am I going to choose? Am
Speaker 1: I going to continue down this path with her? Knowing
Speaker 1: that she's the only person.
Speaker 4: On my side? Too?
Speaker 1: Right? I didn't have anybody else. I mean I had friends,
Speaker 1: but they weren't really in the loop. No one was
Speaker 1: in the loop except for her.
Speaker 3: And she's the expert saying you've got to protect yourself.
Speaker 3: You're hearing this from somebody the only person who, as
Speaker 3: you said, is on your side at that point that
Speaker 3: you've put on your side who is the expert, which
Speaker 3: is why we hire attorneys exactly be expert. So it's
Speaker 3: a difficult position and I just so admired how you
Speaker 3: managed to negotiate it.
Speaker 1: Again, I think that was the instinct versus intuition. I
Speaker 1: really think it came into play then. And there's a
Speaker 1: few moments in the book, like we talked about where
Speaker 1: the intuition comes, and you know, one is with Scott
Speaker 1: where everything including my outside sources, are saying, no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't. You know, it's ridiculous. There's this guy you
Speaker 1: met in treatment, you can't bring him into your life.
Speaker 1: My intuition is what I listened to there in my
Speaker 1: divorce and then post divorce, which I write about a
Speaker 1: little bit at the end of the book. You know,
Speaker 1: my ex husband and I did some really unconventional things,
Speaker 1: non traditional ways of being a family that people probably
Speaker 1: would have objected to or tried to dissuay us from engaging.
Speaker 1: And I listened to my intuition there too, because I
Speaker 1: felt like this was the right thing for us, and
Speaker 1: maybe it wouldn't be the right thing for other people,
Speaker 1: but that was that instinct kind of I pushed it
Speaker 1: aside and listened to the intuition.
Speaker 3: I love it because I think it points to a
Speaker 3: middle way or a third way. Right. We talked about
Speaker 3: this a little bit earlier, like it's simple when it's
Speaker 3: one or the other, you know, at this high powered
Speaker 3: attorney and we're going after him or I'm going to
Speaker 3: roll over and play dead. How do I do something?
Speaker 3: In between and my second marriage, my partner and I
Speaker 3: wanted the kids to be together. We each had a
Speaker 3: kid from a previous marriage. We wanted them to stay together.
Speaker 3: We wanted to keep the home together, we wanted to
Speaker 3: keep a stable unit. But we were a nightmare for
Speaker 3: each other. And what we ended up doing, which I
Speaker 3: never would have thought was possible, was that we remained
Speaker 3: in the home together, co parented the kids, ended the
Speaker 3: quote unquote marriage, We shared it all with our kids.
Speaker 3: We did it. I'd have no idea how it worked,
Speaker 3: but it's exactly what I wanted, right. It gave me
Speaker 3: what I wanted and needed. But I spent years in
Speaker 3: leave or stay, stay early, leave or stay. I couldn't
Speaker 3: see that there was a different option available, that there
Speaker 3: was a blend of those things. And so that part
Speaker 3: of the book just resonated with me so much, because
Speaker 3: you are sort of doing that trade off, trying to
Speaker 3: figure what really matters, and we all have competing priorities,
Speaker 3: but then also being able to really negotiate a third
Speaker 3: way that was really beautiful for you, your kids, and your ex.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, and then what you're describing, which is fantastic,
Speaker 1: takes two adults who are putting their children first. Yes,
Speaker 1: which is not always the case. And so I always
Speaker 1: when I talk about this, I acknowledge that that I
Speaker 1: know that not everybody's path can look like mine.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I agree, one hundred percent, like one person cannot
Speaker 3: have that design, you know. Yeah, I got fortunate that
Speaker 3: somehow we both were able to find that path we
Speaker 3: both wanted the same thing, which was what was best
Speaker 3: for those boys.
Speaker 1: Yes, and how wonderful for your kids. I mean kids
Speaker 1: know they know they were put first. Yep, you know,
Speaker 1: they just do and they feel it and everything. My
Speaker 1: older son has a really big ego. They protected him
Speaker 1: all the way through school, and not in like a
Speaker 1: monster way, but like he's just he's like a little bulletproof,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think it's because he's so secure
Speaker 1: and safe. You know, he's never nervous when dad and
Speaker 1: I are in the same room together, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: dread like what we might say or did Okay if
Speaker 1: I said this, everything can be shared, Everything is fine,
Speaker 1: everything is safe.
Speaker 4: And it's always been like.
Speaker 1: That for him and my younger son as well, and
Speaker 1: I just love that I was able to give that
Speaker 1: to them. Would not have been the case, I imagine had
Speaker 1: I not gotten sober.
Speaker 3: Right right, probably not well, Laura, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for coming on. I've enjoyed every time we've gotten to talk,
Speaker 3: and I love your new book, your podcast. The only
Speaker 3: one in the room is amazing. We'll have links in
Speaker 3: the show notes to both those things. But thank you
Speaker 3: so much for coming on.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, I really loved our talk.
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